With 2012 being so packed full of with highlights it would have been very hard to beat that in 2013. When I look back now, I indeed think the year wasn't that remarkable. But don't get me wrong, I think this year I really enjoyed painting more than ever. I spent a lot of time on various projects, all of them with very good results.

A lot of time was put into the miniatures from The Hobbit boxed set. The project still isn't finished, but when it is, I will take decent pictures of all figures. I already previewed some in the last update post. Thanks to the project 2013 was the year I played a wargame again for the first time in quite a while, a trend that might continue in 2014...

Actually I painted quite a few miniatures which aren't shown on this blog... I really didn't put that much in the blog as the last couple of years. That shows in the stats:

When I take a look at the montly statistics there have been quite a few breaks, espacially the summer months June, July and August with zero posts. Summer holidays have something to do with that, together with some commissions and the tedious work on the horde of Goblins from The Hobbit set. September and October was somewhat better, but November and December only had two posts...

For me blogging is just another way to motivate myself. If it will turn into a job like "I must write one blog post every week" then the fun and motivation will go away very quickly I'm afraid. Like I said at the start of this post, I had a lot of painting fun in 2013, but that didn't really show on this blog.

Because of that, and also because I didn't feature any big events like the German Games Day this year, I'm back at the same visitor number I had in 2011 (this confirms my initial statement that 2012 was quite exceptional :), around 22.000 that is. The chart below also shows that there was much more activity here in the first half of the year:

But now for some good news, the audience of my Facebook page and YouTube channel keeps growing. On Facebook I now have 512 followers (338 in 2012). YouTube audience almost doubled: from 1150 last year to 2250 now.

To conclude this post I'd like to look forward to 2014, which in a way will be a continuation of 2013. Two major competitions are on the calendar: Painting Crusade and Scale Model Challenge, painting wise it will again be a mix of some showcase projects together with some gaming quality stuff. The main target will be the same: have some fun :)

Hello everyone, first of all happy 2014! I hope you got some great painting time in 2013 and that this year will even be better. I'll be posting my traditional year statistics post soon, but first something else:

I've been neglecting this blog a little bit over the past few weeks, so let's grab this opportunity to take a look at what I've been up to lately. As you can see on the picture below there's a bit of everything on my desk now, especially gaming-quality stuff.

I've been doing quite some work on the Hobbit set lately. I've even played a few scenarios :) I expected another boxed set to come out with the new movie, but alas only new models and a new manual, so my Unexpected Journey will probably end when I played the last scenario.

Here's the finished scenery:

And then some quick shots of some of the finished Good models. When everything is painted I will post a big showcase with decent pictures. I would also like to say that I recorded the entire painting process of Gandalf on video. I'm currently editing this so expect a painting tutorial video on him soon!

What's still left to do:

Like I already said I played the first few scenarios. The dice rolling, measuring, moving miniatures, it felt great to play a wargame again after quite some time.

So good actually that I'm seriously considering getting back into 40k. I have an Imperial Fists army in mind. Considering my painting speed this will probably take quite some time to complete, but I'm going to try it nonetheless.

Here's a test model I've completed a while ago:

The army will probably consist of models I like to paint, instead of making a very competitive one. I will of course keep track of the progress of this project here on my blog.

One last thing I'd like to share is that I recently cleaned out the cupboards and drawers of my painting desks. There's a lot of stuff that I don't need any more, so this will be sold on eBay. I still need to sort out all the pictures and look up posting costs, but when that is done then there will be many interesting deals available for everyone. Here's all what I've put aside: